Castlevania: Lords of Shadow – Mirror of Fate To Focus on Exploration

About.com have more information on Castlevania: Lords of Shadow – Mirror of Fate for the Nintendo 3DS, courtesy of a copy of Nintendo Power magazine. Mirror of Fate, they report, takes place 25 years after Lords of Shadow and the game involves time travel.

You’ll start out playing as Trevor Belmont, but at some point in the game, Simon Belmont will become a playable character as well. Two other characters have been hinted at but have not been named yet. You switch between the four characters at predetermined points in the game, as you work your way through Dracula’s castle during different time periods.

Each character will have unique abilities. For example, one may have a double-jump while another may not. More specifically, Trevor can use light and shadow magic, while Simon has different sub-weapons and can summon mystical guardians to fight for him or protect him from harm.

Nintendo Power also mention that the focus of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow – Mirror of Fate will be non-linear exploration. The game is planned for release in fall 2012.

I was confused enough when it was just Trevor, but now Simon as well? I’m fairly sure that there’s at least two generations between Trevor and Simon, so unless the story involves time travel I can’t see this making sense.

Aztec

They don’t coexist in the same period. I read the magazine, it said you’ll explore the same castle in different time periods with 4 different playable characters (Trevor, Simon, and 2 more they’ve yet to reveal… Im inclined to predict Alucard and Sypha).

andref

Don’t forget that the name should imply that the game is based off Lords of Shadow so we should forget the previous timeline and the generations separating names of belmonts we are familiar with

So this game is really in a hurry to reconstruct the Castlevania continuity starting from Lords of Shadow. What bugs me is how can the other Belmonts exist if Gabriel had no siblings and didn’t have a child with Marie before she die? Did he have a kid -after- the game’s ending? Because that would mean the Belmonts are part vampire.

Farid Belkacemi

No spoilers please (you should edit your post), don’t forget this is a 3DS game : I already finished LOS but some nintendo fans may not… To answer your question, we don’t really know as the time between the final boss and the ending is HUGE.

Well, I’m sure Diego is referring to the DLC Reverie where Gabriel became a Vampire shortly after Lords of Shadow. Thus the idea of him having normal children seems to be impossible.

Aztec

When did they said Gabriel didnt have a child of his own with Marie before LoS’ events started? For all we know that kid could’ve been 18 years old by the time LoS begins.

thebanditking

also possible that Gabriel has a brother who then has children, given the ending of LOS and the end result it would make for a perfect reason for the hatred between the Belmonts and Dracula

SirRichard

Gabriel wasn’t an actual Belmont, he was an abandoned child raised by the order. It’s very easy to assume that the Belmonts were an established family already and he was adopted by them, or that his prominence in the order (tales of his victories would spread easily) would likely cause others to take up the name Belmont before they find that he became Dracula.

Lords of Shadow wasn’t clear on a lot of things about Gabriel’s early life or whatever, there’s plenty of space to fill.

Testsubject909

Gabriel wasn’t adopted by the Belmont, he chose the name Belmont because of his love of mountains. (Belle Montagne in french means Beautiful Mountain. Cut short, Bel-Mont)

Now, that would say that it’s mainly coincidence that his name is associated to who would later be the vampire hunters who would come hunt it down I suppose, though there is nothing that would go against the idea that he may or may not have been adopted by the Belmont family. Though for the evidence present, it seems that any association he has to an actual Belmont is entirely coincidental.

edit: Which is to say, I would like to see a reason as to why the Belmont come to fight him.

I know we were originally given no reason whatsoever, it was just how things worked. If you’re a Belmont, you hunt down Dracula, that’s how it was set up since the NES era.

But with Lament of Innocence, it turned into a sort of generational curse and duty. As such, I wonder how it’s going to be implemented here. Are we just going to forget it all and just go with “It’s a Belmont, he’s Dracula, it’s meant to be” or are we going to get a reason behind why Belmont are going after Dracula?

edit: Or they could go the more simple route and just have it that incidentally it’s a Belmont character who has a personal immediate grudge with Dracula because Dracula did something to them in the immediate now.

SirRichard

Could be a blood feud against Dracula, started after the whole surname thing came to light. That, and perhaps the Belmonts specialise in vampire-slaying above all else (hence the Vampire Killer whip) so they feel even more obligated to slay Dracula? I imagine here it won’t be a matter of him dying and resurrecting later, just getting defeated and presumed dead, or pulling a Dr.Wily and getting hunted down by each generation.

Testsubject909

Well, by nature itself, Dracula is a blight on earth and a being that spits in the face of god, if the Belmont are holy warriors of the church, they’ll no doubt try to raise arms against him quite naturally, as such I imagine the natural reason would simply be that the Belmont family are the hunters of creatures of the night by excellence.

I’m very excited for this and am glad to hear that it is coming out this fall. I definitely have a 3DS game to go alongside the plethora of console games releasing then. Cool news also about Simon being playable as well.

Solomon_Kano

Four characters? Different playstyles? Dracula’s castle? Jumping around in the timeline?

Yessir, I’m gonna enjoy this quite a bit!

Zenkaider

It’s…awesome…just one thing KONAMI :

WHY U NO PUT IT ON THE PSP AS WELL????????????My pocket and my wallet are already crying with black tears and my other pocket is officially with one foot in the grave…do you want me to send them all to hell to get the 3DS right now?

*Looks at the screen…and thinks…*

Boys,it’s a sacrifice you have to make for daddy!TO THE MALL!

Testsubject909

Compared to a game and a new console.

What is money? But a miserable little pile of bills. But enough talk, have at you!

Hell I could use someone, I’m trying not to cry at the fact I can’t download Fate/Unlimited Codes before it gets pulled of PSN.

Zenkaider

I already have!*Sacrifices money to the counter of the mall!* XD

Solomon_Kano

Because even if they did we’d never see that version over here. And the LoS reboot was clearly aimed at upping the series’ popularity in the west. I’d like a PSP version, but I can easily see why they went for 3DS and 3DS alone.

kylehyde

Gameplay wise, they got me
Graphically (thanks to the new scan), they got me.

Now I need to see the first trailer, but my position has passed form neutral to interested, after all one of my favorite castlevanias (Circle of the moon) was developed by the same team behind Castlevania 64 (which many people didn’t like, however I enjoyed it), anyway I will keep my head cold and clear until thursday.

Katamari Toys

No Igarashi = no buy, castlevania LOS was very meh

Testsubject909

Fair enough, your loss.

Though I am curious when Iga’s going to make his next Castlevania game, if he’s going to make one.

After all, from everything I scrounged up, I saw nothing that stated that Iga would no longer work on a Castlevania game, plus he worked on side projects that were Castlevania related while Cox was working on Lords of Shadow, and there was a lot of hinting that Iga could continue his own timeline of Castlevania games alongside Cox’s remake.

It makes sense because we still need a few more games, like what became of Shanoa after Order of Ecclessia and when Julius fought Dracula in 1999 and helped seal him and Castlevania in that solar eclipse.

Testsubject909

Outside of that though, we’re pretty much nearly done with Iga’s timeline.

He gave us a beginning with Lament of Innocence and an end with Soma conquering the eternal spirit of Dracula under his own and preventing his body from ever resurrecting thus ending the curse of Dracula forevermore (or at least for his lifespan).

Though there would be nothing to prevent tragedy to befall Soma after all. He has a love interest and really, honestly, if I was a bad guy and from the cult of Dracula, you know what I’d do to tempt him into becoming Dracula?

Kill his lover.

Phlo

Okay, might not be terrible, but I’m really not a fan of this new continuity.

Wow thanks for the awesome tunes! The first one rocked too, huge Ky Kiske fan here.

Testsubject909

No problem. Enjoy.

neetyneety

I didn’t even need to see that scan to be excited for this game. As long as it stays true to Castlevania’s 2D roots, I will enjoy this VERY much.

Umar Kiiroi Senkō

oooooooooh the HYPE. castlevania on the handhelds has always been my favourtite and this just sounds so cool. if the game focuses on exploration im HAPPY!

Klaus00

WOOOT! The news turned out better than I expected , time travel seems to be populair in games lately. And Simon summoning mystical guardians? DO FIRETRUCKING WANT

XiaomuArisu

So they using the new Timeline.
So four characters?Richter,Trevor,Dracula(?),Death(?)

Klaus00

Death & Dracula playable in a metroidvania? I would love to see this happen but lets be reasonable , it’ll probably be Alucard taking the 3rd spot and another unique character to add variety(Oh how I wish for Grant)

Stuart Nisbet

I doubt it’ll be Alucard, just because they’ve used him enough and his timeline isn’t separate enough. At the same time though I can totally see it happening…

Honestly my first thought was Grant, Trevor, Sypha, Simon, but if it’s predetermined time switches then maybe Shanoa, Soma, Simon and Trevor? If they’ve all to be whip wielders then it’ll most likely be Simon, Trevor, Julius and Richter.

Who knows? I’d honestly just like another Charlotte Aulin main series game.

XiaomuArisu

Well technacly speaking we played as Dracula 5 timesXD

Testsubject909

Are you also counting Harmony of Despair in there?

XiaomuArisu

Yes!
And

Spoilers

Aria/Dawn of Sorrows,The Wii fighting game and Lord of Shadows.

Testsubject909

Considering there’s time travel, that’s possible, but it would need to be late in the future.

Pumpkin and acquiring the Pumpkin Summon on Curse of Darkness can bite my bag.

Testsubject909

Fair enough.

I could never really get that deeply into Curse of Darkness. The maps just felt like too long a trek, and I was getting tired of doing the cartwheeling-nonstop-flip just so I could travel at a moderate speed.

Yeh they are, no doubt about that, not to mention how long and infuriating the extra dungeons are. I effed up trying to fight and item steal from the Gold Skeletal at the bottom of the second tower. I was lucky to get my ass out alive. Even so, I liked the length of some of the stages, when I was playing Ecclesia I felt they could have been just alittle bit longer.

SirRichard

This game is looking better and better; read elsewhere that where Trevor uses the combat cross, Simon will have the Vampire Killer as his main! MercurySteam seem to know what they’re doing!

Testsubject909

They do, it’s what made me enjoy Lords of Shadow so much. There were obvious minor flaws and some hits and misses, but overall, it showed that it was a product of love and dedication to the Castlevania series.

And I’ll still note, I posted above a 2 year old sort of thesis/theory/essay on why the game is without a doubt a Castlevania game which turned into a lengthy discussion that only reinforced my stance since any appeal to the opposite often resulted in coincidental evidence or data that could be taken both way or that led to more data that encouraged the idea that Lords of Shadow was, undeniably, a Castlevania game through and through fully supported by Konami from the grounds up.

And also reinforced my thoughts that the game could’ve been more awesome if Hideo was not involved.

edit: And to note. I love Hideo’s work.

SirRichard

You should put that up on pastebin/Scribd/Google Docs and post the link in the Open Thread sometime, mate, that sounds like an interesting read. Maybe wait for a quiet moment so it doesn’t get buried, even!

Testsubject909

I already posted the links for it here, they’re at the top since it’s the newest comment on this article.

Read your essay, enjoyed it. Granted Lords of Shadow wasn’t bad, just the story could have been better. Didn’t enjoy how you know who became Dracula (friend of mine ran his mouth at work after he beat it), but Mirror of Fate seems to be redeeming that abit.

@Codemakura:disqus haha aw man, really? See, that’s the kind of stuff I don’t get. He did stir people up, but he wasn’t like malicious or mean or anything. I disagreed with him on like everything but I still enjoyed reading his crazy comments haha thanks for the link tho man, I don’t have a twitter account but I can still check out what he’s up to lol

Code

@RupanIII:disqus Yeahh, I mean on one hand I got to the point where he was posting in every thread stirring every thread up; so I kind of get why it was done upu;; But still I’m with you Tuna was never really malicious, and once you got over knee-jerk reactions to him, his comments were kind of hilarious >w<;

JazzWithAttitude

EXPLORATION!?
OMFG I NEED THIS
But i still prefer using swords….

Testsubject909

If you or anyone else’s got Harmony of Despair, I can help grind and tank you, and I can do nearly any shortcuts except the acceleration glitch outside of the Ch10 elevator in the clocktower.

Is this game played from a 2D or 3D perspective? None of the articles I’ve read seem to be clear about this.

Testsubject909

Seems like 2D if you ask me, the poster above you just posted a link with a lot of screenshots and due to how some of the things are cut, it looks like it’s most definitely going to be in a 2D perspective with 3D graphics.

Whelp, time to finish beating Lords of Shadow. My body is definitely ready.

Testsubject909

I’m posting this here because I figure it might interest more people and it’s related to Lords of Shadow.

Caleb1993 was wondering if he could see my essay/thesis/theory as to why Lords of Shadow was, without a doubt, a Castlevania game, and so I did a bit of scrounging up and found some very old threads I made years back in gamefaqs.

Additionally, this is new detail, if you look up Sequelitis Super Castlevania 4, it adds more weight as to the success of Lords of Shadow in reaching it’s goals in wanting to recreate an old school feel akin to Super Castlevania 4 which if I still remember right was praised by Cox. Which, for better or for worse, affected some of the gameplay in the long run as far as I’m concerned in the matter.

Also, back on subject of what’s here. It sounds intriguing and I for one am anticipating videos to see just how the gameplay turns out to look like. And it’s yet another reason for me to get a 3DS. Eventually…

RupanIII

No Iga?! :( Still this does sound interesting, hopefully we get to see it in action at e3

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